Customers often rely on transaction accounts when buying goods or services from various merchants. Typically, customers use physical or digital transaction cards that are associated with the transaction account to buy these goods or services. Due to the recent developments in technology, customers now have access to mobile applications and other systems that allow them to keep track of various transaction cards. But these mobile applications may not provide all desired functions. For example, customers may need multiple applications to keep track of multiple transaction cards that they have obtained, and these mobile applications do not possess the ability to provide tip recommendations in real time when a transaction card is used to pay for a good or service.
Outside of mobile applications, some existing systems provide simple tip recommendations, such as a preset percentage multiplied by the total cost for a good or service. One type of existing system enables merchants to print a simple tip recommendation on a customer's receipt, which the merchants may present to a customer in order to obtain the customer's signature. Another type of existing system enables merchants to provide a simple tip recommendation via a kiosk when the customer swipes a magnetic strip of the transaction card into a slot or inserts a chip located on the transaction card into a chip reader. However, all existing systems that provide tip recommendations share several potential drawbacks.
For example, the existing systems are complex and rigid. These systems require merchants to purchase standalone devices or software to provide the simple tip recommendations to their customers. Such standalone devices are not only costly, but are also decentralized and difficult to update and maintain. In addition, the systems are bulky and inefficient because they are composed of more storage, memory, and software than needed to provide tip recommendations.
Moreover, such systems may be closed systems, which allow a customer to use the system only at a particular merchant, and are not integrated with financial service providers associated with the transaction cards. Thus, existing systems do not have the ability to customize tip recommendations to particular users, which often leads to customers' electing not to tip a merchant or a merchant employee. Accordingly, merchants and merchant employees do not receive optimal tipping amounts from their customers, which may lead to losses in revenue, employee morale, and customer satisfaction.
In view of these and other shortcomings and problems with existing systems, improved systems and techniques for providing tip recommendations are desirable.